


aperol spritz

by aquavenusjoe (nasaplates)



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol, Backstory, Character Study, M/M, Mention of Past Violence, Post-Canon, allusions to racism and homophobia in unnamed side characters, blood mention, nicky is the knife, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:28:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25538770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/aquavenusjoe
Summary: They’re in a bar, somewhere, it all starts blurring sometimes, the wheres and the whens of it all.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 55
Kudos: 338





	aperol spritz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hyb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/gifts).



> this scene came to me in a dream, literally, and then expanded as I was idly typing it out hoping to finally lay to rest the awful months long writer's block I've been going through. the fact that I could make this into a love letter (hopefully the first of many) to a relationship I adore and never really thought I'd see represented right there on screen in an action flick, AND gift hyb a drabble (well, almost a drabble) that she won in a giveaway, is just winning all around.
> 
> none of my writing is possible without len, but this especially would not exist if she hadn't coaxed me into watching TOG and reading the comics and lovingly screaming in the gc(s) about immortal husbands. thank you, heart of mine.

They’re in a bar, somewhere, it all starts blurring sometimes, the wheres and the whens of it all. Booker has theories because he’s secretly a nerd like that, quietly and stoically loving the technology age, reading up on every scientific advancement he can get his hands on. So he has theories, about the human brain (and wasn’t that a marvel, neurons and electrical impulses and so on) and how it was made only to hold what is necessary for a singular human life, made to degrade, even, with the slipping of sand through hourglasses only built to be so full. That, for them, who flip the hourglass endlessly, over and over ceaseless drips of sand changing direction new again and new again and new again, they pose a unique issue: memories, and how to hold them in a space that is much too small for so much  _ time. _

Anyway. The point is, they’re in a bar somewhere, and Nicky isn’t sure where, except that they’re speaking Italian, and the people they’re drinking with keep giving Joe shifty looks, but they’re trying (failing) to be subtle about it, and they’re all arguing, of all things, about the origins of certain alcoholic drinks. The specifics have started blurring for Nicky, too, because he’s been drinking just steadily enough to keep ahead of his overactive liver trying to rinse the poison from his blood, and so he’s hovering somewhere just shy of completely soused. It’s a pleasant place to be, for Nicky, this blurry glimmering place, with Joe’s arm casual around the back of his chair, his thumb subtle where it presses into the muscle over his shoulder blades that he swears hasn’t loosened in a century at least.

Something uncoils, in Nicky. He hasn’t checked the exits in the past five minutes, and Joe is happily snarking in delectibly fluent Italian interspersed with lovely little dances of Tmazight murmured into his beer glass, and Nicky loves. It’s the kind of love he used to expect from the spirit of Christ, but Jesus never felt like this, only this one man, only Yusuf and his smile and his beard rough on Nicky’s cheeks, between his thighs, his mouth gentle and loving on poetry it took Nicky a frustrated century to translate without feeling a headache coming on. Poetry written by men with the adoration of a God Nicky had been told was heretical, a God Nicky had lived a life certain was false in the way only boys who had never known warmth could believe. Like street dogs who had never met a soft hand, it was easy to think, of course God would be stern, of course He would be distant, like the men who spoke His word were stern, and distant, and took the lives of starving boys because “Thou shalt not steal.”

These are old hurts, scars soothed by gentle hands after Nicky had stitched wounds back together himself, lonely except for his anger. They are nothing more than the ridges of the wooden table they’re drinking at, a texture for his fingertips to taste and remember what once was living can never truly die.

Nicky floats back to the surface of his drink, electric blue and violently sweet despite the teasing and scorn because he has drunk many a foul concoction, and sometimes they taste like home, but if he wants to take advantage of flavors so bright they hurt the eyes, well, he likes indoor plumbing, and silicone lube, and Snickers, too.

“Why are we listening to  _ him, _ about this,” one man says, face redder than the drink explains, mouth pursed in that particular sour shape of a person proved wrong and bitter about it. “You,” he turns on Nicky, sneer gentling but only just, “What do  _ you _ think,  _ you _ have a stake in this.”

It’s been too long a life for Nicky not to put it all together quickly despite the way his brain (too small though it may be) is sloshing around in his skull. Glares for the Arab, camaraderie for the Italian, picking useless fights about things history, Nicky has on very good authority, will not give a single fuck about long before these people are dead. Nicky has a very complicated relationship with his people, descendants of those he loved first, but this is not something he loves about them.

Joe leans back in his seat and Nicky spares a moment to look at his gorgeous side profile and admire the way the soft cotton of his t-shirt stretches across his chest. Joe doesn’t look at him, just smiles mildly at the table and murmurs something in the _single_ dialect Nicky hasn’t managed to become fluent in, like that’s going to stop Nicky from translating _him._ _Here we go again,_ Joe says, but with fondness cresting like a wave across his brow, and Nicky vows to leave marks on him later, just the way he likes, bright and purple and possessive, and Nicky will take photos of them while he’s still buried inside of Joe, pressing them with his fingers so he can feel Joe’s moan fade along with the bruises.

Still looking at Joe, and he knows he’s smiling stupidly, now, he flicks a dagger older than this bar onto the table to land with a quivering  _ thunk _ neatly next to his alarmingly blue cocktail. Nicky turns back to their belligerently ignorant audience and it’s easy to put away the priest’s desire to educate and draw the street urchin’s smile onto his face, one thousand years old and still fresh as a daisy.

“That is what I think,” he says, still smiling, and the entire table stills like prey animals realizing they’ve been sharing a watering hole with a predator. Joe’s thumb brushes back and forth along his shoulder and only Nicky can hear the laughter in it. So, he isn’t much for poetry. The dagger is a metaphor for the sharp and deadly elegance of this love he has carried through the centuries, sharpened and burnished and so on and so forth, just as a Sufi poet Joe once knew has no doubt said in much prettier words. If Nicky tries, he can recite some, old and new,  _ if god has given me anything / it is already yours,  _ even if he’s pretty sure that’s a song he’s gotten stuck in his head. But he’s best with his body, with his hands, best when he uses the fact no one suspects him of being what he is, sniper in the night, heart spilling over to stain his hands so much deeper than the blood ever will.

So, he doesn’t get into a bar fight, this time. Nicky plucks the dagger free of the wood and slips it back where it came from and takes a sip of his ridiculous drink and Joe makes some quip that Nicky only half follows because he still doesn’t actually know what he nearly stabbed a man  _ about, _ but it’s fine because he’s still just tipsy enough to want to take Joe’s cock in his mouth like the body of Christ and suck him dry like his come is holy water. Joe squeezes the back of his neck like he knows what he’s thinking, which only makes Nicky lean back into it, force Joe to take the weight of his skull in his palm or let him hit his head on the chair back. On another day, Joe might let him suffer a mild concussion just because Nicky’s being a brat, but Nicky knows him, and Joe knows Nicky, and so he cradles his head like it’s a precious thing, and Nicky’s heart shakes under the weight of affection it’s never gotten used to, not in centuries, not in another thousand years to come.

They leave the bar eventually, once Nicky gets tired of how much he has to drink to stay buzzed, how much he has to  _ piss _ because of how much he has to drink, and so he’s stone cold sober, eyes sharp as they’ve ever been, when Joe kneels over him where he’s leaned against the headboard and feeds him his cock in absurdly careful increments. Joe could kill Nicky in one hundred ways, like this, and Nicky could kill him in at least as many. They have, most of them, blood bathing their bed as often as come did, too many lifetimes ago. It was a game, sometimes, who could stay alert enough to fend off murder, race to death, or orgasm, or both at once.

Now, Joe’s hands are tender on Nicky’s jaw, and Nicky’s leave a lover’s bruises on Joe’s thighs. They won’t draw blood, tonight, only prayers, only thanks for whatever brought this man to him, whoever gave Joe the grace to (eventually) love his enemy, whichever God let Nicky fill his palms with the holy flesh of the only thing he’s ever truly considered sacred.

Nicky takes Joe in all the way to the back of his throat, not fearful at the lack of oxygen because he is no longer afraid of death, and he thinks about after this, about his fingers spreading his husband open (so many times over,  _ husband, _ each time as glorious as the last), and he thinks he is so god damn grateful, for so many things, but just then, just at that moment when Joe, his Yusuf, his lover his husband his--, just when he lets him in like a god inviting a supplicant to temple, he will be grateful, full stop.

**Author's Note:**

> please don't ask me about the title.
> 
> if you're wondering, the joe pov of this goes something like: yearning, lion metaphor, endless love, love as freedom to be oneself, yearning, holy shit I'm getting _railed_ tonight, ocean metaphor


End file.
